


Infinities and Nevers

by delicate_mageflower



Series: It Means Tumult Universe [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Grief, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Kanders Angst, Mental Illness, Modern Thedas, Neurodivergent Character(s), Other, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, referenced character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicate_mageflower/pseuds/delicate_mageflower
Summary: Chapter 68 of It Means Tumult from Anders's perspective.





	

**Author's Note:**

> CW: references to suicide, suicide attempts, self harm, and institutionalisation

Anders was in the kitchen feeding Pounce when he heard Trista’s keys twisting in the lock on the door. She’d been out late with Elissa, whatever that could mean. They’d been spending a lot of time together, a fact which made him every bit as happy as it did unreasonably nervous.

He was thankful he’d been pushed to bring Elissa back into his life, of course, there was no denying that. He was amazed by how much she still cared about him, even after so much time and distance. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, that she’d always gone so far out of her way for him before, and it made sense to him that she’d never let go of the strange affection she’d had for him back in Amaranthine. After all, she did save his life. He had no doubt in his mind that he would not be there without her. She had put herself well over the line to protect him when the Circle came, and without her they would easily have been able to take him, and Maker only knew what kind of punishment he’d have been in for. He probably wouldn’t have let them, though, in reality. He probably would have done exactly as Karl had if it had come down to it. But it didn’t, Elissa made sure it didn’t. He owed her everything, and the thought of what could have been otherwise still made him feel sick.

“Love?” Trista asked nervously as she walked through the door. He didn’t know why she might be nervous to see him, but the feeling passed to him right away.

“Hey there,” he started, making his way over to her, having just put Pounce’s food back on top of the refrigerator. “You were out a while.”

“Yeah…”

She was so anxious, and so obvious about it. He thought she probably had no idea how transparent she was, even if they had both learned all too well by then that the other could always notice. That didn’t stop him hoping she didn’t see how contagious the rising edge she exhibited was, all the same.

He tried to make a joke about how close she and Elissa seemed to have gotten since she’d been in Kirkwall. Trista tried to joke back, but it did nothing to conceal her feelings.

“What is it, love?” He finally asked, responding to the way she was shifting almost restlessly, how her whole demeanor practically shook. It was so subtle she might not even have realised it was there, but he saw it clearly, like each odd little movement she made instantly lit up for him under the spotlight.

She had made him a mix CD, a strange thing to be so anxious about. She made them all the time, just as he did, because his car was very old and did not have such modern amenities as an auxiliary cable. He was lucky it even had the CD player at all, honestly.

Her eyes stayed on it when he took it, though, and he could see that the tracklist—a feature usually forgone on the discs they regularly put together for driving music—was so neatly written, of such obvious importance. So he read through it.

It only took the first few for him to see that the song titles formed a message, vaguely poetic and so very sweet, so very Trista. Music had been such a bonding point for them, it had been since the beginning, and he had to give her credit for such a display. He had no idea what might have prompted it, though. It was just another Thursday, and all that would normally have meant was making a quick dinner after work and then spending the whole evening on the couch watching something together. There was nothing eventful and he wasn’t sure what had apparently suddenly decided to make it so.

He adored what she’d done, though, this beautiful love letter in the most perfect format possible for them.

He reached the end, the last few tracks, and when it finished out with “You Could Be the One” and “Marry Me,” well…

_“Oh.”_

It wasn’t exactly subtle, and her anxious anticipation over handing it to him made complete sense.

It was beautiful, though. It was absolutely perfect.

And all of a sudden, he was fucking drowning.

She must have seen it, considering the way she immediately started calling for his attention with a quick desperation that he knew he must have given her a reason for. She went straight into pleading and he tried to respond, tried to give her something but he was gone.

“Anders, what is it?”

“I don’t…I don’t know, I don’t…”

It was all he could get out, the most he could force himself to engage, and it felt like a miracle that he’d managed that much.

The door slammed behind him as he nearly collapsed onto the bed, only then even realising he had walked away. He knew that was bad, that she was probably breaking down as much as he was after he’d done it, but he’d done it and he couldn’t look back, couldn’t bring himself to face her.

“What is the fucking matter with you? Fuck, look at you, look what you’ve done, you never should have let it get this far, you miserable piece of shit, how could you…how could you…fuck…”

He had evidently resorted to talking to himself, words falling fast, flinging themselves into the fire he was lighting around himself. He couldn’t stop, he wanted to scream. Instead he started sobbing, words still rapidfire under his breath, however unintelligible they had surely become. At least no one was there to hear.

“Anders? Anders, love, please…”

Her broken voice was muffled by the door between them, but he heard the crack, the melancholic desperation. He couldn’t respond. He had nothing, was nothing.

“You worthless piece of shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Look what you’ve done, you should’ve just died with…”

He was worse off than he thought.

This was about the time Trista would usually tell him something about the good he does, where she would bring up his clinic or their friends or even his activism, and that made it all that much easier to shut her out. He didn’t want to hear that shit, he couldn’t possibly deserve it, not after this.

He heard a sound against the door, he thought she might have hit it. Maybe she actually was angry with him, as angry as he was with himself. He would understand if she was. A part of him wanted her to be.

There was no call for him to react as he was, he didn’t understand why he was falling apart like this at such a thoughtful gesture, such a sincere show of how fucking much she loved him, and he hated himself so much for it.

“Tell me how to fix this, I—”

So she was still out there, she was still trying to reach him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t call back, couldn’t let her in.

“You should never have let it get this far,” he told himself again. “You should’ve known you were going to break this, just like you did last time.”

After all, it was his fault Karl had to go to the Gallows, which made it his fault Karl did what he did. Trista always told him that wasn’t true, that the Chantry held all the blame for that, and he obviously couldn’t disagree that they were responsible, yet he couldn’t claim he had no part in it despite that. He knew his guilt, no matter what anyone else ever tried to tell him.

He had let Trista get close, anyway. He had always been such a shameless flirt before Karl, but after they were separated he thought that part of him had been locked away and buried forever. Somehow, however, she had dug it out and found the key, almost effortlessly, and he had wanted her to. He had wanted her, needed her, with a passion he didn’t know he could still feel. He loved her, he loved her so fucking much but when it came to light just how intensely she loved him in return…

He’d been doing so much better with it, he thought he’d gotten past it, at least as well as he ever would. This should not have happened. She did not deserve this. He did not deserve her.

No one had tried to help him like she did since Karl, no one had ever been there for him like she was since Karl, no one had ever made him smile like she did since Karl, no one had ever given him hope like she did since Karl, and before Karl, no one ever had at all.

He realised he wanted to say yes. He wanted to run back out to her and hold her tight and tell her that of course he would, that he wanted it more than words could ever say, that he would do anything and everything for her.

“Anders…Anders, I’m…I’m so sorry, love, I…I’m, umm, going outside. I’ll be outside. Come find me outside if you…”

Except answer the fucking door, apparently.

She was gone, he knew. He should have gotten up to catch her, should have run out to her to tell her she had nothing to be sorry for, that he was the one who was sorry for being crushed by past ghosts he couldn’t get out from under, how grateful he was that she always understood, how trapped he felt under the weight of his own failure. He was failing her just as he had failed Karl, breaking her heart just as he had broken his.

He knew what he had to be putting her through, knew that surely she was shattering just as much as he was, and both of these breaks were his fault. And he knew that, worse yet, she probably believed the same of herself.

“Fuck,” he actually shouted, and a fist landed hard onto a thigh. It was his fist, his thigh, he realised, but he was so disconnected he hardly felt it. So he did it again.

He curled into himself at the edge of the bed, lying nearly in the fetal position and still cursing. He ran a hand over his other arm, tracing old scars.

He thought to how he had never understood why they had ever pulled him out of solitary, and he cringed upon thinking back to his vague and incoherent memories from so long ago of lashing out and screaming, desperately trying to resist what they told him was help in the form of activated charcoal being forced down his throat.

He remembered, too, the time he stayed up all night with Trista, forcing it on her while she fought him that same way. She’d told him that wasn’t his fault, either. He’d almost understood then. He didn’t understand anymore.

His mind raced back to his year alone in that fucking cell, to the visions of Karl he saw there, telling him how terrible he was. And he believed It, just as much then as he had before. Oh, how he believed it.

Yet he let himself move just a little, shifting further onto the bed and allowing a hand to trail off of it, grabbing the plush mabari that Fenris had given Trista for Satinalia from beside it. Sometimes she held it while they sat together on the couch, sometimes she even slept with it. Those were typically the bad days, those times when she used it for extra comfort, for the reminder of the home she’d left behind. He had come to notice that a lot of her nostalgia for Ferelden was tied to missing her father, and on those nights Pounce simply had to make the sacrifice of not having much room left in the bed for him. It wasn’t often, but he found himself hoping just then at he might somehow take comfort in it, himself.

It smelled like her. Barely, but just enough.

He didn’t deserve to let himself have it, and the fact that he was going to do it anyway only solidified in his mind how awful he really was.

It wasn’t even the timing, either. So much of how fast they had moved had been his idea, so it didn’t actually feel very out of line for them to make that kind of commitment so early. He was sure they could, in fact. He was sure about her, moreso than he had ever been about anything, even Karl.

And there it was.

He didn’t know how much longer the toy dog would retain its scent if he kept weeping into it, but neither could he stop himself.

He had loved Karl, he knew that. He had really and truly loved him with an intensity that ruined both of their lives and led Karl to the end of his. And there he was, suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation that he was even more certain about Trista. Circumstance had much to do with it, of course; it was no slight on Karl and even in this state he couldn’t fixate on that part of it. But if it was true that this was more, after what happened last time…

He couldn’t bear the thought.

He loved her, he loved her more than he’d known was possible, so perhaps it was better to shut her out then, to finally push her away like he had failed to do months before, than to risk whatever he might cause for her in the future.

It was an illogical train of thought, he knew, it didn’t actually make sense and all it was doing was bringing unnecessary misery down upon them both, but it held him in place.

His mind wandered back to her and how she must be feeling, back to Karl and all he could never forgive himself for, and then to Kinloch and all that he’d endured, all the abuse he had suffered, how much of it he must have deserved in the end.

The bipolar would exacerbate the post-traumatic stress disorder, and of course he was aware of how that would explain why he could still blame himself for what was done to him despite all he had seen and heard done to others, but in that moment it did not matter.

All that mattered to him right then and there were the patients he couldn’t help, the problems he couldn’t solve, and hurting the people he loved the most.

There was a soft knock on the door, so cautious, so considerate. He didn’t know how she was still doing this. He didn’t want her to.

“Anders, I…I love you, and I’m sorry if I was out of line…”

“Fuck.”

“I just…I love you. I’ll be out here if you want—if you need me.”

_“Fuck.”_

“I love you.”

He loved her, too, he loved her so much but he could not form the words. He begged himself to call to her, again he begged himself to get up and go out to her, to hold her and show her how very loved she was. The “if you want—if you need me” echoed in his brain, rattled around and burned inside him.

He could be happy. He could, relatively speaking, actually be happy. He had that chance, that chance that he could hear crying on the couch, and for some strange reason it would make her happy, too.

Karl was probably right, he really must have been born on All Soul’s Day. Maybe that would explain how he destroyed everything he touched, throwing hope away in exchange for mourning that did not have to be.

It was almost pleasant to imagine that this was simply fated, that the very stars had doomed him. So he couldn’t allow that, either.

All he had was deep depression and guilt, the sounds from the main room and the knowledge that the blame was his alone, and too many memories he couldn’t shake. That would keep him company. It was all the company he’d earned.

He hoped she would wake up in the morning to hate him. He was so afraid she wouldn’t. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to look her in the eyes again after this, so full of shame and regret. He prayed she wouldn’t let him.

**Author's Note:**

> I just felt like this side of it needed to be shown, too. Because who doesn't love fandom sufferering, right.
> 
> Also posting this on my birthday just because. I'm 30 now. It's a little weird. So, you know.


End file.
